Rising Cyber Storm: South Africa's AI Driven Threats Are Cautioned By Kaspersky.

According to the most recent IT security economics study from Kaspersky, South African organizations reported an average of 19 occurrences per year. At the 25th cyber security summit South Africa, which took place in Johannesburg last week Kaspersky discussed some of the most important risks facing companies and the ways that they may lower their risk exposure.

This is because the constantly changing cybersecurity threat landscape necessitates that organizations pay close attention to it. Kaspersky discovered 467,000 malicious files everyday Worldwide in 2024, a 14% rise from the year before. The rising risks in the digital sphere are shown by the fact that 34.2% of Kaspersky users in South Africa reported having experienced web borne attacks in the Previous year.

In 2024, bankink and financial malware increased by 34% over the year before, presenting a serious problem for both customers and financial organizations. The likelihood of identity theft and data breaches increased as password stealer detections rose by 14% simultaneously, backdoors increased by 42% and exploit attacks increased by 55%, providing cyber criminals with ongoing access to infected systems. Another fact is that affiliates are using a " multi platform " strategy, which has made the crimeware ecosystem more flexible and dynamic.

The operations of cyber criminals are dispersed throughout several regions. The Grandoreiro banking malware, for instance, was spreading from latin America to Asia and Africa, as Kaspersky warned. Over 1,700 financial institutions and 276 Bitcoin wallets in 45 countries and territories were the target's of the attack in 2024. South Africa, Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda were among the African Nations impacted. Businesses are advised by Kaspersky to adopt a proactive strategy to Cyber security in order to counteract these increasing threats.

This should entail obtaining threat intelligence pertinent to their software profile, industry, and geographic location; putting advanced security solutions, like Kaspersky next, into place that take into account the security requirements of various IT maturity stages. Given that many cyber attacks take use of human error, employee training is also essential. In order to find vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, organizations should also conduct regular threat assessment and penetration tests.